Umegaki briefly introduces the current as well as past research 
projects, and basic policy interest of the three instructors of the 
course. The introduction will be followed by a brief outline of what 
this course is meant, supplemented by a simple account of what 
“policy management” (sougouseisakugaku) is about. We will also 
give the “must” readings for you to consider throughout the 
semester.

 a) Human Security: Discussion of the beginnings and changing 
conception of human security. This will be followed by the 
elaboration on what the key conceptual as well as policy issues 
involved in the “human security” research.
      b) Umegaki will survey some of the preceding research on 
“human security.”

a) Development: An examination of the contextual background of 
“human security” issue. Though historical in nature, the 
examination should turn up some concepts for both heuristic and 
analytical purposes. 
      b) Policy Research and Management: We will discuss how a 
“research” requires a certain degree of neutrality – commitment to 
context-free explanation – and equally acute sense of its 
consequences of (or responsibility for) what it produces in the 
actual context of life. 

The class will discuss the development cooperation to developing 
countries under the UN Development Decade and recent new framework 
of the development cooperation decade of United Nations.
a) UN Development Decade: The first UN Development Decade was 
launched by the General Assembly in December 1961. The UNDD had been 
revised every 10 years and continued until the year 2000 (UNDD-
Ⅳ).   
      b) Recent UN Decade: Replacing the earlier UNDD, UN resolved 
new framework of the decade in 1999, called as the first United 
Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (which technically 
began in 1997 and extended through 2006), and related to it, the 
period from 2005 to 2015 was designated as the UN Decade of 
Education for Sustainable Development (UN-DESD) by the General 
Assembly in 2002.

a) As one of the case studies, the class will take the international 
cooperation process on reconstruction for the Bangladesh flood 
disaster in 1989, in which the lecturer was also directly involved. 
But not only that, this case definitely represented the most typical 
conflict and coordination process among international societies. 
b) Based on the case study, the class will then discuss about the 
relationship between development and vulnerability to disasters, and 
conclude the need for integration of disaster management with 
development.

a) Through the comparison of ODA between DAC member countries, the 
class will try to bring the characteristics of Japanese 
international cooperation policy in sharp relief.  
      b) Highlighting the multilateral cooperation, the class will 
try to point out problems of Japanese Government on lack of human 
resources and strategic project choice, institutional barrier, and 
so on.

As one of the pioneering methods to approach the “field” of policy 
issues, we examine what is generally known as GIS. Highly techonolgy-
oriented, still GIS respects the onsite observations of “life as 
lived” in a given and changing environment. What are the merits of 
GIS? 

Two weeks will be used to examine how GIS works, during which some 
of the ongoing research in China under Yan’s direction will offer 
the concrete contexts of GIS performance. I encourage the students 
to contrast GIS with other, perhaps a little more familiar, methods 
of approaching the “field,” identifying the issues, and evaluating 
the outcome of the past policy performance.

ditto.

Using two cases of policy issues, we critically test some of the 
orthodox approaches which have occupied the prominent positions 
within the development studies. Two cases are drawn from Umegaki’s 
recent research in Vietnam.

Using this and the following weeks, students present “research 
proposals.” 
        By this week, all students are required to make their 
presentation material available on the net.

ditto.

We examine the contending claims of different “policy studies” 
within Social Sciences for their past achievements in “solving 
problems.” The key points of examinations and comparisons include: 
1) levels of observations; 2) methodological innovations; 3) 
normative stances; 4) the feedback “paths” for observations, 
analyses and evaluations.